The Emperor Wasn't Naked
by What's Their Name
Summary: The night before junior year starts. Suze muses, Jesse must endure the results.


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Disclaimer: The Mediator and all respective characters belong to Jenny Carroll. The Emperor's New Clothing belongs to Hans Christina Anderson. Characters and story are used here with permission of the author's and is not used for profit.

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Summary: _The Night before junior year starts for Suze. She is bored and lets her mind wander. Jesse has to endure the results. Set after Darkest Hour and right before the book Haunted written under the pen name Meg Cabot._

I flipped through the page of fairy tales bored out of my mind.

"Jesse?" He was sitting across from me on the windowsill flipping through another tome Father Dominic had lent him this summer, while periodically running his fingers over the back of Spike's neck. 

"Yes Susannah?" He raised his dark brown eyes at stared at me quizzically, his hand continued to scratch the mangy feline.

"There _are_ more mediators aren't there?" I asked feeling a little neglected as of late. He hadn't so much as sat beside me since the incident with Paul. This was why I sat lazing on my bed after supper the Sunday night before school started and he seated a safe distance away from me.

"It would be egotistical of you to think you and the priest are the only ones." He replied as he shut the immense book. I briefly noted the title. 

The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine  
Sounded like a snore to me.  


"Well Jack and Paul proves that theory wrong. What about before us?" I needed to do something, my job had ended a week ago and I had done the beach to death. I needed something to pass the time.

"What do you mean?" 

I had spent the week getting much needed rest time before school started.

"Well when you were younger, did you ever meet anyone like us?" Now the night before with nothing to occupy me I was feeling dull and useless.

"Susannah I couldn't speak to the dead like you." He gave a cumbersome sigh. It's not as if he didn't have the time to read the rest. He had all the time in the world, spending a few minutes talking with me wouldn't kill him.

"But, I mean when you had been a little less dead." He gave a little cringe. Why do I always say the wrong thing?

"A little less dead?" He asked raising his scarred eyebrow, in the very same fashion as Joey from Friends.

__

Sigh Why did I have to fall head over heals for such a difficult guy? "No-yes- no I mean when you had been newly dead. Like for a couple of years. Before you met me."

Jesse sort of smirked, I don't think I had ever seen him smirk before. "Can't say that I have."

"But there must have been more." I stood to stress the point. 

"Uh huh…." Jesse had gone back to the book. 

I began to pace the room. Briefly my eyes glanced at the book I had been leafing through. When I had set it down it had fallen open to the fairy tale Emperor's New Clothing. I got a very _very_ evil idea. "Maybe… Maybe the guy wasn't naked." I said in a sort of singsong voice. 

What 'guy'? He continued to read. That would change.

"From The fairy Tale 'Emperor's New Clothing.'" I flopped down next to him, scarring Spike. That darn cat took a swing at me and caught a hold of the back of my hand.

"But Susannah, that is a fairy tale, a myth, not real." Jesse hadn't even noticed what Spike had done. I tried to cover the bleeding with a tissue.

"Um, hello? Right now I'm speaking with a real live…erm… a REAL ghost. Aren't you guys suppose to not exist?" I flung my hands out to rally support. I only succeeded in flinging the tissue at Jesse's head.

His head shot up in surprise when the bloodied Kleenex hit him in the nose. "Fine." Oh God, I wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out. 

I could feel my face steadily reddened "No really, think about it. All fairy tales are based on some truth. What if The Emperor was a mediator like me, but did know it. What if in the court suppressed his knowledge by making him think he was like cookoo." At this point I was beyond babbling. "Hey yeah, so these ghosts are all angry with The Emperor because he ain't making with the mediatin' so they play a trick on him. The servants don't take any notice to the kings rambling cause of course it happens all the time, the king talking to himself."

"Susannah where are you going with this?" Jesse was giving me this look as if he though I was cookoo as opposed to the Emperor.

"No wait let me finish." No stop me, because I can't stop myself. " So like they decide to make use of their ghostly appearance and his ability. So they like, trick him into believing that they are real and stuff, and exchange clothing with him."

"But I though they make him a new suit." Jesse appeared to be confused. Well that was two of us, because I had no idea where I was going with this.

"Well I said they were _based_ on not exact re-tellings!" I am **so** stubborn sometimes.

"Nombré Dois Susannah, calm down." He pulled me back down to the window seat, after I had jumped up in my burst of anger.

I took a couple of deep breaths before I continued. Much to my own pleasure Jesse's book lay neglected on the floor. "Okay so like they exchange clothing with the Kings, and of course he believes that he is fully clothed, but everyone else is like "whoa this guy is totally in the buff!"

"In the buff?" Jesse was so clueless sometimes.

"Birthday suit, au natural, leafless, exposed…naked." Good thing he has a person just like me whom has the patience to teach him.

"Oh"

"Yeah, I really have to buy you a slang dictionary." Maybe for Christmas. Except maybe when Jesse was alive he was Jewish. Were there Jewish cowboys?

"Slang?" Huh? Is he kidding?

"Oh come on you have to know what slang is. They had it back in the old times…" I stared at him incredulously. 

He gave a short chortle. "Susannah I was kidding."

"Oh." Note to self I am very gullible when in the company of very hot Latino male ghosts. "So the King thinks he's all regal looking, and he is just not to everyone else. So he escapes from under the watchful eye of the court physician who has diagnosed him insane and then goes parading around town as if nothing was amiss."

"Susannah?" Damn, he had picked up the book again and laid it across his lap.

"Yes, Jesse?" I leaned in hoping maybe my female whiles as Father D calls them would woo Jesse away from the book.

With his head bent and obviously lost once again in the book. I slumped back in defeat.

"You need a doctor." I stared at him mouth agape. 

I was about to retort back, when Doc shouted from downstairs, "Suze! CeeCee's on the phone for you." 

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Authors Note: This is just something that came to me last night, well the idea of significant mediators through out history. Like what if many mystical occurrences had occurred because of ghosts. Some that popped into my mind were Nostrodamus (spelling?) and maybe his predictions are due to the help of Ghosts. If they were powerful enough why couldn't they time travel (this idea was based on the rule "Nothing can happen that affects the choice to go back" so a powerful ghost could go back and prevent their death because then the ability to go back would not have been made. A paradox would be made.) Or the virgin birth. Maybe a ghost was responsible for it, as well as many of the "sightings" of aliens' saints' etc. Another could have been the Salem Witch trials. Maybe one of the girls did see ghosts and convinced the others they could to. That sort of thing. 


End file.
